Blog

In France I bought Buffy a t-shirt that reads, "I love so much". We think this captures Buffy's essence perfectly. She loves so many things so much!

Tonight I was brushing her teeth and she kept chatting to me through the toothpaste bubbles, "I love you more! I love Daddy and Katie more! And I love my friends. I love my family and my friends MORE!"

I asked, "More than what?"

She replied, "God. More than God. But I love God, too. I love God so much! I really love him."

So Labour has a new strategy - try to embarrass the Conservatives. Their preferred weapon of choice is Daniel Hannan, UK MEP and darling of the American right, who has a rather amusing habit of saying incredibly sensible and completely batty things - often in the same sentence. Like so much of what Labour chooses to do, their plan is stupid:

(1) Every time the media refers to the latest thing Hannan has said (today's utterance is that he apparently admires Enoch Powell - yeah, well so what, one can admire someone without endorsing absolutely every statement they ever made), they have to remind us precisely who he is. And Hannan is still most famous as the man who eloquently and effectively made Gordon Brown cry when he tore strip after strip off the one-eyed Jock bastard in a European Parliament speech. So that's the clip they use. Not quite the message Labour wanted to endorse, methinks.

(2) Even worse, Hannan is very useful to Cameron. Hannan's extreme views on certain issues will make him very appealing to wavering Conservative voters who might be thinking of voting UKIP because they think Cameron is a Tony Blair wannabe. Seeing Hannan might be enough to keep them in the fold. Yet Cameron can easily dismiss Hannan as a 'mad aunt in the attic' sort of character. He's not an MP, he's an MEP, so it's possible to pretend he's not a Conservative while quite obviously allowing him to be one.

I rather suspect that in drawing attention to Hannan, Labour are playing with fire. You play with matches, you get burned.

This will truly put all their sustainability rhetoric to the test. They had better clean up every single last piece of litter behind them, or they will be exposed as a bunch of middle-class, pampered, spoiled jumped-up hypocritical brats.

I hereby pledge that if they don't clean up behind themselves to my satisfaction, I shall drown a panda in toxic waste to teach them all a lesson.

That said, I'm also mindful of the awful violence at yesterday's football match between West Ham and Millwall. It's vital that we find a way to neutralise the tensions between these teams' supporters and reconcile their differences.

I propose that we achieve this by finding them a common enemy, against which all supporters can unite. And what do football fans hate more than other teams' football fans?

That's right - hippies. So let's get all the fans down to Blackheath so they can k--k the s--t out of some climate change protesters.

With three days to go the Unbirthday party is now going to happen whether we want it or not. I have enough juice, roses, cakes for most of the kids to have a decent time. I have guest gifts for half of them, packs of cards for everyone. At the very least, we can sit around and play Snap. We could also make crepe paper roses, because both Katie and I can knock those out pretty well now. I think what I really need is some sleep!

Katie and Buffy are watching Total Wipeout, which I think is called Wipeout in the States. It's a bunch of comparatively sporty people flinging themselves across a giant inflated obstacle course over pools of thick, oozing mud. They usually spend more time in the mud than leaping the obstacles above. Buffy, on her first ever viewing of the show, has been offering advice to the competitors, "No! You've got to hold on! Slow down! Be careful! Look out!"

Today we decided to stick to Greenwich, and I am so glad we did! What a lovely day. We walked into the centre of town, stopping by La Salumeria, the great Italian deli along the way. We bought some freshly made paninis to order and some juice boxes. Now these are not ordinary juice boxes, they are just pureed juice - peach or pear. So delicious I can barely stand it.

After shelling out just over £10 for the three of us including marinated olives and some pasta for later, we walked towards the Market. We were headed straight for Mr Humbug, but got sidelined by a couple of run-ins with teachers from Halstow, which was really nice. Finally at Mr Humbug, the olde timey sweet shoppe in the market, we filled our boots. On a mission for gift bag fodder, we sampled several brightly coloured sweets and bought an awful lot of candy. No worries though, we're still spending far less than going a traditional gift bag route.

Bags filled with sweet treats, we headed towards the Maritime Museum. We stopped along the way to eat our panini, which were amazing. I love La Salumeria! Katie managed to spill blood all over hers, but we didn't mind: She'd lost a tooth! She celebrated by calling Daddy at work. He was very proud of her. Within moments Buffy notified us the heavens were opening, so we dashed inside the museum.

The National Maritime Museum is always awesome. They have a brilliant children's "Hands On" section, which was mercifully uncrowded. This meant the girls got to do everything they wanted to without dealing with queues. Just as we were thinking of heading out, the rain really started bucketing down. We found distraction in their activity room. Our mission was to go round the museum again and draw pictures of three displays, then return to the activity room and recreate the displays in our very own 3D gallery. The girls drew brilliant pictures of a stained glass window, a bunk bed and a WWI women's navy (W.R.N.S) uniform.

Back in the activity room, we drew, cut, pasted and toiled until we had something we were justifiable proud to bring home. It's in front of me now, and it looks pretty good! Katie did a brilliant WRNS uniform complete with it's own wardrobe with peephole. Buffy decorated the walls and made a sign for our gallery. I did the stained glass window and the bunk bed. All in all, highly successful.

I just love that we *live* here. We didn't have to go far afield, just stumbled out of our doorstep. What a wonderful day! When we finally left the museum, the sun was shining and we detoured through the playground. Fantastic!